


Hazel Pines and the rise of yet another mafia

by ThisCat



Series: Transcendence AU [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-14 20:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5756377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazel Marie Pines is her father's daughter. There is no denying it. The ultimate proof of this comes when she leaves for Vegas to start her studies, and does the exact same thing he did when he was that age: accidentally start a mafia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hazel Marie Pines

**Author's Note:**

> I said I would write it, and here it is. The prologue, at least. The first chapter should be up soon enough, but after that, I can't promise you any good schedule.

Hazel Pines knew she had a lot in common with her father. Of course she knew. She had been told so her entire life, and she never minded it. Why would she mind it? Her father was a great man, beloved by practically everyone. Not once had she been told that being alike him was anything other than great. Though in looks she took more after her mother, and her hair was more reminiscent of her Gam-gams, if a little more curly, she had his multitude of freckles, and on the inside, she was her father’s daughter.

She had the same unnatural affinity for people, being able to cheer people up or reduce them to tears with only a few words from a young age. The first time she did the latter, her father sat her down and explained why she had to be careful with that, that she had to watch herself. Her mother described it as having a weapon in her mind, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. She took these things to heart and made friends, not enemies. Few were those who wanted to make enemies with her, anyways.

Hazel had a slow temper, slower than that of her siblings, but more dangerous when it came to the surface. It was still not to the level of her father’s, though, and she got in fights. She could never stand for seeing others be mistreated, and though she treated the weapon in her mind with respect, her fists were always readily available. Growing up in a mafia, like she did, probably had something to do with it. She grew up surrounded by the idea that if you saw something that needed fixing, you fixed it, immediately.

No one, aside from those who already knew, would guess that Hazel grew up as a mafia princess. This was mostly because her father only begrudgingly admitted to it being a mafia after several years of denial. He insisted for the longest time that they were only a group of friends who helped each other out, and in some ways, he was right. It was always about helping people, always about building a network and a community that official channels were incapable of creating, never about personal profit. For Hazel, the mafia was responsibility, not prestige.

So, yes, Hazel Pines had a lot in common with her father, but she would never, ever, in a million years have guessed exactly how much they would end up having in common. She shared that with him as well.


	2. Notes and dormroom brownies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it'd be up quick :)

When she moved to Las Vegas to start university, Hazel realized quickly that this place was different from Portland. She was not a witch, like her father, and neither did she have any other particular magical abilities, but like most of the family, she was somewhat sensitive to background magic, and it worked differently in Vegas.

“You bet,” were not words said lightly here. Promises were nothing but words, and wagers were binding. Those who had lived there longer than she told her stories of the spirit of Vegas, the first city to own itself.

A spirit of luck and fortune had taken residence there, and bought and wagered until it was one with the entire city, until it was woven into the fabric of reality within the city borders. In Vegas, its rules were law. Hazel, who had met the consciousness of Portland through her father on several memorable occasions, understood the stories as absolute truth.

Many residents avoided betting entirely for this reason, the risk was too great. Many did it too much, thinking themselves unbeatable with every winning streak. Hazel… compromised. Growing up in such close proximity to a demon, and with her people skills, she knew how to make an unwinnable bet seem viable, and she used it when she had to, but like her sharp tongue, she knew to keep it down to a rarity.

\---

Aside from the magical abnormalities of the city, Hazel’s stay started normally enough. She studied hotel management and got herself a roommate named Laila.

Laila studied magical theory, and had a passion for equal rights. She and Hazel became all but best friends less than an hour after their first meeting. The kind of friends who told each other everything, who would help each other with anything. If Hazel had ever needed help with hiding a dead body, and her family was out of the question for some reason, Laila was the one she would go to for help. As it was, though, neither of them were murderers, so they just attended protests together and shouted at pro-nats. Life passed by normally for almost an entire month.

The fact that it lasted that long at all was almost a miracle.

\---

Like most other living spaces, Hazel’s dorm had brownies. The little creatures were almost never seen while on the job, but with the right gifts, they made themselves known through regular and thorough housework. Like with any other sentient creatures, Hazel had been taught to appreciate and respect them from birth. That was not the case for everyone at her dorm.

Her first sign that something was wrong was the dust bunnies. She knew there were brownies living in the dorm because the gifts she left out in the evenings were always gone in the mornings, and the dishes were returned cleaned to their proper places, but she had never heard of a place with both brownies and dust bunnies.

It bothered her for days. The whole thing was confusing, but she had no real way to figure out what was up. Had it been any other species in question, she would have simply found them and asked them, but brownies rarely appreciated being approached. Leaving them respectfully alone was simply a part of the unspoken agreement between the races, and it bothered Hazel a lot to see such an obvious sign of trouble without any good way to help. That is, until she overheard a conversation between a couple of boys on the second floor.

“Man, are you doing laundry?” one of them asked as she passed their common room on her way up the stairs. He sounded as if the concept itself was ridiculous.

“Well, yeah,” the other one answered. “Has to be done, you know?”

“Nah, dude,” the first one said, and Hazel stopped to listen. It was a bad habit, she knew, but a hard one to shake. “Nah, you don’t have to do that. This place’s got those little things that do that for you.”

“What, brownies?”

“Yeah. Nifty things, right? They’ll fix everything for you if you let them.”

“I don’t know… It feels kinda weird.”

“Hey, if the critters want to do housework, I’m not gonna stop’em…”

That was the last thing Hazel heard before she stood up and left, practically shaking in anger. Of course. _Of course_. Here she had been worried the little people were sick or something, but no. Once again, the problem was simply assholery.

She slammed the door a little too hard as she walked into her own common room, and startled Laila out of her reading.

“Whoa! Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

Instead of answering, Hazel fetched three sheets of paper and a marker, and sat down at the table.

“Sweetheart? Hazel? Babe? What the hell? You’re never this pissed off, what happened?”

Hazel passed her the first of the papers, which now read:

> **_New Rules_ **
> 
> _The brownies are to be treated with respect and courtesy._
> 
> _If you are not incapable of doing so, doing your own laundry/dishwashing/general cleaning is an average level of respect._
> 
> _Anyone caught breaking these rules will have to deal with Hazel Pines, room 302._

“Ooh,” Laila said as Hazel copied the writing onto the two other sheets. “That’d explain it. It’s bad, then?”

“Hopefully I won’t have to beat up more than one person before they get the picture,” Hazel said in answer. Then she grabbed the newly made posters and went out to put them up.

She hung up the ones near the exit and on the first floor first, before entering the second floor common room to hang up the last one. She could hear someone come up behind her to read it over her shoulder as she pinned it to the board.

“Hey, girl,” he said, and yeah, that was the asshole from earlier.

She turned around to glare at him, but he only gave her a sleazy smile and let his eyes travel downwards. She was so tired of those looks. Not that she had never gotten them in Portland, but most people knew who she was there, she was Hazel Pines, not just a pretty pair of frontpieces. No one knew her in Vegas.

“What,” she said, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Hey,” he said, still with the sleazy smile. “I don’t really think how I do things is any of your business, lady.”

“Oh, really?” she said, “because _I_ think how you treat the people who _live in our home_ is the business of all of us.”

He laughed at her. Actually laughed her right in the face. She should have expected this, but it still pissed her off.

“You’re not going to take me seriously, are you?” she asked, and he smiled at her condescendingly.

“Look, no offence, but you’re…”

The rest of the sentence disappeared behind the fist to his nose.

He staggered backwards, clutching at his nose and wearing an expression of pain and bewilderment. Before he could get another word out, she turned and left.

“I expect those rules to be followed,” she said over her shoulder as she walked back up the stairs.

\---

In the end, she had to have a _talk_ with two more boys and a girl on the first floor before things got better, but they did get better. Less than a week later, there was no trace of the dust bunnies, and every person in the dorm knew Hazel’s name. Not that she noticed. She was used to being known.

She did notice waking up one Saturday morning to find an elegantly folded note written on simple, green paper laying on her bedside table.

_Thank you,_ was all it said, but Hazel smiled, added a little note of her own saying, _anytime_ _:)_ _,_ to her gift that day, and went on with her life, completely oblivious to what she had just started.


	3. The girl in the café

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy women's day! Let's destroy the Bechdel test.

The brownies kept leaving her notes. Almost every day she would wake up to a folded, green paper at her bedside table, filled with what looked less and less like normal correspondence, and more and more like news reports.

It got to a point where she would spend as much as half an hour, sometimes even more, each morning just reading through the thing. They told her about the general happenings of the supernatural community, about the people and the places, and about established relationships and situations. The reports were clear and concise, and Hazel learned more from them than she thought she ever would have on her own, even if she lived in the city for the rest of her life. Whenever they mentioned something she got confused about, she would leave a little note with a question along with the evening’s gift, and get an answer in the morning.

Hazel liked getting those reports. She liked getting up early every morning to read the updates on the going-ons of this city she was only beginning to call home, even though Laila thought she was crazy for getting up any earlier than absolutely necessary. It reminded her of being a little girl and sitting on her father’s lap as he read his own reports aloud, or being a little older and looking through them herself. In hindsight, the fact that she did not draw the connection earlier was a little unbelievable.

\---

A bit of a walk downtown from Hazel’s dorm was a place called Hotel Sinagra. It was a big building with everything from very expensive, top floor suites, to only reasonably expensive normal rooms. It had conference rooms, a very nice bar, a restaurant and a café.

Now, while the café was owned by the hotel, it was not a part of it, and anyone was welcome. The quiet atmosphere, okay food and free refills on coffee had at one point started attracting college students, and by the time Hazel moved in, they were about the only ones who ever went there.

It was a nice place to get work done, and once her workload started building up, Hazel went there too.

It was a grey Tuesday afternoon, and the café was packed. Hazel looked around for a bit before she realized that, no, there were no empty tables. She would have to sit down with a stranger unless she wanted to do her studying at home, which was generally impossible with Laila in the house.

She sighed, and had already resigned herself to half a day of studying lost when she saw a table in the back, empty aside from one really tall girl. Something about her pinged Hazel’s help-needed instincts, and so she looked closer.

The girl was far too tall to be a regular human, judging from her proportions, probably a half-giant of some sort. She wore a long-sleeved sweater even in weather that had anyone else in T-shirts, and she sat hidden away in a corner and hunched over a book in a way that just screamed, “please ignore me”. Maybe sacrificing a day of studying was worth it.

Hazel approached the table quietly, and smiled her best smile, the kind of friendly, open smile she knew from experience would make people trust her almost immediately.

“Excuse me?” she said. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

The girl looked up with a startled look in her eyes, but after glancing around at the full café herself, she nodded, and Hazel sat down.

“I’m Hazel, by the way,” she said. “Hazel Pines.”

The girl mumbled something that was nearly inaudible over the chatter of the café.

“…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Hazel gestured apologetically at the crowd.

“Janice,” the girl said, loud enough to hear now, if only barely. “Rivera.”

Hazel smiled at her.

“It’s nice to meet you, Janice.”

They lapsed into silence after that, partially because Hazel really _did_ need to study, and partially because coming on too strong might stop Janice trusting her, and she needed Janice to trust her if she was going to help with what seemed like nearly crippling self-esteem issues. Such issues were unfortunately all too common in people of mixed blood like her. It came with being unique.

“So, biology?” she asked after about fifteen minutes of quiet, nodding to the textbook in front of Janice.

Janice just nodded, and Hazel hummed a little, trying to figure out how to get the girl talking.

“Is it any interesting?”

Again, Janice kept her answer nonverbal, a shrug. Hazel kept her expression open and questioning, waiting for something else, not demanding, but silently asking for elaboration. Janice shrugged again.

“It’s just genetics.”

Her voice was still quiet under the chatter, but it was there, and Hazel smiled.

“You don’t like genetics?”

“It’s not… I’m more of an ecology person…”

Ah, there it was. _Get her talking about herself, and we might still be able to do something about that shell_.

They talked. Hazel kept her questions open, yet quietly insisting, keeping Janice talking about something she obviously did want to talk about, despite her insecurities. Ten minutes into the conversation, Janice continued talking without being prompted. Twenty minutes after that, they both remembered that they had studying to do, and fell back into a companionable silence. Hazel learned more about ecology from those twenty minutes than she thought she had in the rest of her life.

They kept studying together in the afternoons, and they kept talking. Conversation eventually turned from ecology to other things, like Hazel’s own choice of studies.

“Hotel management,” she answered when Janice asked her.

Janice said nothing to that, but she gave a glance of a very pointed nature around the café, and Hazel laughed.

“I just figured I’d want a small bed & breakfast somewhere. Nothing big. Definitely nothing like _this_.”

She gestured around the room at the café that was still located at the bottom floor of a large hotel. Janice smiled, and even laughed a little.

“I bet you could do it, though,” she said, having so much faith already in this strange girl who dropped out of the sky to become her first friend in years.

Hazel laughed again.

“Yeah, sure, why not. I just need to get my hands on a huge-ass hotel. I’m sure that’s not hard or anything.”

“If anyone could…” Janice started.

She dropped the thought before it could be fully articulated, but the intention was clear enough, and Hazel thanked her for the thought. For now, though, she would settle for getting this girl some more friends.

\---

Introducing Janice to Laila was a risky, but ultimately very successful move. The two girls fell together like old friends, something absolutely no one saw coming, and it turned out that having Janice around was the only thing that could get Laila to not only be quiet, but actually study, something which was good news for both her grades and Hazel’s peace of mind.

The days passed like that. Quietly. Well, mostly quietly. There was the constant stream of small incidents that always happened around Hazel, like the time she accidentally walked into, and eventually resolved, a fairy-pixie dispute which had apparently been ongoing for the last ten years, or the time she sat down to talk to a distraught elf, and realized a few hours later that she probably rescued them from years of slavery through a loophole in a contract. Otherwise, though, things were quiet. Perfectly quiet, and perfectly normal.

As far as the word “normal” goes for a Pines, anyways.


End file.
